Eyes of the Tiger

Stankowski had merely become a statistic, representing the 1-in-5,000 nationally who have a flap complication from this form of laser eye surgery. Today his vision is "perfect," and he no longer needs contact lenses.

"A lot of guys on tour have had it done, and nobody I know has had a problem," Stankowski says. "Now, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody who just wants to improve their golf game, because it's not going to make them any better, but I would recommend it to anyone who is tired of wearing glasses or contacts. I don't see any better now than I did with contacts. It's just easier without them."

Enhancements after the initial surgery

Canadian Ian Leggatt, a first-time winner on the PGA Tour this season, also knows a thing or two about Lasik complications. Leggatt, who had extreme nearsightedness in both eyes before having the surgery in October 2000, says it was about a week after the initial procedure before he was seeing normally again. But by Christmas, he was experiencing chronically dry eyes and blurry vision, so he went back to his surgeon.

Enhancements, which are procedures performed after the initial surgery in an attempt to achieve better visual acuity, are necessary roughly 5 to 10 percent of the time, depending on the severity of the prescription. Most quality surgeons perform enhancements on 3 to 8 percent of their patients, which means they're not trying to over-correct the first time and are willing to improve things down the road. "Enhancements have nothing to do with the procedure or with anything other than the healing properties of that person," Whitten says. "The more an eye has to be corrected, the harder it is to predict healing."

In Leggatt's case, healing was the biggest problem. After missing nine cuts in his first 12 events of 2001, he was sure he wasn't seeing as well as he had with contact lenses. By October, a year after his initial surgery, Leggatt's vision was blurry again, so in November he went in for a second enhancement that solved everything. "Obviously, I wish everything had turned out fine the first time, and that I wouldn't have needed the enhancements, but I'm seeing awesome today," says Leggatt. "It's not like I was ever going blind or anything."

According to Market Scope, the leading source of information on the refractive surgical market, there were 1.3 million Lasik procedures in the U.S. in 2001, and there are about 1,200 laser centers across the nation. Because no one agrees on what exactly constitutes a complication, it's difficult to estimate the number of surgeries that don't go as planned. Although Lasik is marketed as a quick and painless way to improve your vision, websites like www.surgicaleyes.org and www.lasikdisaster.com include horror stories.

Richard Robinson, an attorney from Buffalo, N.Y., who handles malpractice, says Lasik lawsuits are on the rise. Robinson represented a client who won a $1.25-million judgment in 2000 after suffering a laceration extending through the cornea, iris and lens of the right eye during the procedure. In Kentucky, a 38-year-old woman received $1.7 million after laser surgery left her legally blind in her left eye.